She was beautiful, wearing a black dress spread out around her like a butterfly. Her lips, deep crimson, were pursed just so, as though she were about to utter the secret to divine transcendence. Graceful eyebrows arched wonderingly, and a pale face was framed by curled, sedate raven hair. Long, thin, delicate arms stretched up to the heavens, supported by thin, silver wires that might have been confused for jewelry by the way it twined around her skin. Her long legs were bent under her, her knees and feet sitting in a drying pool of blood.

The only fault marring her captivating beauty was, in fact, the large and painful-looking meat hook protruding from her back, which was holding her upper body erect, suspended from the ceiling. I reached out to touch the cold, murderous metal that had impaled her so with a gloved hand, and turned back to look her in her deep, still, liquid eyes, upturned to the blank and unrelenting ceiling.

"We'll find them, my love. Don't you worry yourself. There's always something to be found, if I know Jethro," I murmured affectionately.

"Ducky, what do you make of it?" the man himself asked, businesslike, behind me. "I assume that you're going to tell me that the vicious pointy thing in her back isn't the cause of death."

"Oh, naturally, Jethro. This pitiable masterpiece was hung here after death. She is too peaceful for such a gruesome end," I motioned for Mr. Palmer to negotiate her corpse into a black body bag, "but what reason did you have for such a notion?"

"I could see it on your face when you were examining her. You're always more sad when they've been visited by one more disposed to sadistic tendencies."

"You knew because of how I reacted to all the others? You of all people should know that each one is different to me. She didn't struggle on the hook. The wound is clean; she didn't bleed, even. Rigor mortis implies that she's been dead for less than twenty hours. I cannot give you any more information at this point, without dear Abigail. Will this butterfly be gracing my stainless steel kingdom?"

"You betcha, Ducky. Get her down there, ASAP." He left, taking his famous cloud of surliness with him.

I turned back to my butterfly and smiled sadly as Mr. Palmer zipped up the body bag. I was always a bit too late to truly know my charges, but there was no way to do my job well without a respect for each and every one, and an understanding that they were victims in a truer sense of the word than most. However, this one… this one was different. She was special. She had been carefully, painstakingly arranged, almost as a morose sinner pleading with her god for forgiveness.

"Tell me, Anthony," I said as he walked past, "May please I know her name now?"

The senior field agent checked his notepad. "She's Petty Officer Aria Randal. Her friends," he jerked his head back in the direction he had come and winked, "tell me that she didn't like people to know her last name. She thought it was unromantic, or something. She was deeply religious, if that helps."

"It does, thank you." I felt that I knew her at least a bit better. My conversations with her could be flavored with something more to her liking, at the least. "A beautiful name, Aria. It suits her perfectly."

"Yes, she was a real looker. Too bad, but she was way too young for you, Duck. Just twenty years old, more's the pity. Hers was a face that would only get better with age." He made an odd, obscene noise in the back of his throat, totally perplexing me. Only Anthony could manage that.

"Do not stake so much on time, Anthony. We are all ageless in death. Her beauty will never grow to be more than this, now, because she will never see thirty." I placed my hand on the body bag, and whispered, "We are all ageless, Aria. You beauty shall be preserved in the most ancient sense imaginable."

"I loved each of them, in my way. Of course, we both know that you are different, don't we? Aria, you need only to offer me all of your secrets, and we shall all work together to find the cretin who did this to you." The empty, echoing room passed no judgment on me. I had spoken to every single one of my friends since I first started medical school. My workspace understood me.

The door opened just as I was ready to cut her ribs, and I quickly snapped the first without looking around. "Hello," I had to guess who it was, and continued, "Ziva."

As I continued cutting, there were clicking footsteps, made by high heels, so it was at least a woman. Abigail's shoes never had heels, and, honestly, the Director made some sort of point of never having to come to visit me in my little haven. Ziva spoke with a thick, lovely accent, and asked bemusedly, "Very well, Doctor. I give up. How did you know that it was me?"

"I can smell your perfume, my dear." I looked up and smiled warmly as another rib was cut, and another. She smiled back with good humor in her eyes. "And, to remind you yet again, it's Ducky, please."

"Very well, Ducky, but I think that you are yanking my leg. I do not wear perfume."

"The sayings are 'yanking my chain' and 'pulling my leg', but an admirable effort. You have come from Jethro to see if anything new has been found out, and he sent," another sharp snap, "you, because you have never come here by yourself before. You wear the Channel brand, either 'White Diamonds' or the more popular 'No.5'. Expensive, my dear, but you have exquisite taste."

She nodded, conceding a victory to me. "'White Diamonds', it is far more unique. Every annoying victory wife in the country wears 'No.5'."

"Trophy wife, my dear. You did not come here to match wits, I presume? Something to do with a certain murder case, or a profile, or to simply brainstorm ideas?" The ribs were finally finished, and I carefully lifted the sternum free of the body, setting it mindfully aside on an adjacent table. Examining the plethora of organs, I noted that there was no visible damage to any of them. "That's odd, isn't it, my love?"

"You are being quite forward, Ducky," theIsraeli woman said, raising an eyebrow questioningly. "Are all of your work associates addressed so warmly?"

"Only those that won't be addressed ever again, Ziva. Did none of the other agents tell you?" She rolled her eyes. "Each of them is as special to me as a son or daughter. More so, perhaps, for this particular flower. She was beautiful, and whoever killed her did not want to destroy that. I would have wished such a death on many of my previous clients."

Intrigued, she said, "Tried to preserve it? But he killed her. There is no better way to destroy."

"Ah, you think like a soldier, my dear. I think," I lifted my wrist and hand, waving my fingers in a haughty gesture, "like an artiste. Death stops the ravages of time, and the pressures of life. She was, perhaps, at the very height of her joie de vivre."

"Joy of life." She was deep in thought, considering my words, and only translated the French out of habit.

"Remember first her position as found; arms to the heavens, begging forgiveness. Her killer modeled her as a sinner, or, if I may, a damned saint. She did not die on that hook, or the wound would have both been ragged from her struggles and covered in blood. When the heart stopped, all of her blood ran to the lowest point of gravity."

She raised her dark eyebrows further, and guessed, "Her feet?"

"Her knees, in fact. In such a kneeling position, the circulation was cut off from the knees down. Have you ever had one of your limbs fall asleep? None of the blood could go past her knees, and would have started to pool and collect, except for the two incisions here," I pointed to a two-inch-long, bloodstained cut a finger's width above Aria's right patella, "and here," I did the same with the identical cut on her left leg.

"The killer allowed the blood to drain, to keep her legs from swelling?"

"Hence the rather large pool, actually. Well done, indeed. It would have taken Mr. Palmer a great time longer, you know. But, the boy has promise."

She looked around, perceptively more comfortable than before. "Where is the ungainly boy?"

"He is visiting with Abigail, retrieving the tox screen reports, and generally indulging his rather exhaustive schoolboy crush on the lovely girl. I expect him back in roughly thirty seconds. Abigail eventually kicks him out of her lab, around two minutes ago." The door opened behind me, and I said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Palmer."

"I'm sorry I took so long-"

I sighed, "I know, Mr. Palmer. Come here, please. Tell me what this butterfly died of."

He came over, donning clean gloves and squinting down onto the table. I nodded as he began the examination at the head, and worked down to the feet. I could hear just the faintest of mumblings, and smiled. He was talking to her, too. And so was another generation born.

"There are no signs of a struggle. The blood left the body from here and here," he pointed to the same cuts I had, and I met Ziva's eyes over the table with a wink, "and there is no visible reason why she would have died."

"So the conclusion is…?" I prompted him expectantly.

"Er…some sort of poison?"

"And that would be?" Come on, Mr. Palmer, the answer was so close…

He looked confused, and said, "I can't tell you just by looking, Doctor."

I stared pointedly at the file on the counter, where he had left it. With a double-take, he finally smiled and I had the feeling he suppressed the urge to lay a finger to the side of his nose. "But, Doctor, I didn't see the results, and Abby said it was for your eyes only."

"But, Mr. Palmer, your innate curiosity should have overcome that particular barrier some time ago. It is a requisite trait, to be a successful medical examiner."

Now Ziva seemed confident with a certain proverb, and said, "Curiosity killed the cat, I believe."

"Better with the more literal translations, I see, but no. It goes on; satisfaction brought him back. Mr. Palmer might have been punished for looking, but it would have been worth it to be able to answer the question, now, wouldn't it?" I looked intently at Mr. Palmer.

He quailed under both our stares, and muttered, "Yes. Oh, yes."

"What did she die of, Mr. Palmer?" I repeated patiently. He looked down at his rather bloodstained hands, and looked around, panicking slightly. I could tell he was about to take off everything, and sighed. "Will you please help, Ziva?" I said for him, smiling.

"Of course, Ducky." She crossed across the room and took up the file, reading aloud, "The charming Abby tells us that the petty officer had a large amount of arsenic in her system when she died. It had been built up slowly, and she died by a massive dose to finish her off."

"Showing that her killer was content to wait, but something rushed him. Ziva, if you would allow, may I make a suggestion?" I looked at her hopefully.

"And what would that be?"

"Petty Officer Aria Randal was loved and cared for, not hated. She trusted them, and they slowly poisoned her. It was happening over a long period, and after, someone took painstaking care to arrange her as she was. It would have been simpler to just kill her immediately, and leave her as such. The killer wanted to say good bye over time. Look for a spouse or beau."

She nodded diligently, and waved her farewell. I suppose many of the people I have met in my life have come under a fatherly eye from me. All, I think, except Jethro. He is, unsurprisingly, my best and most trusted friend in this world. I like to meet my friends after they die; it saves me a great amount of despair. Otherwise, I worry about the time when I myself would see them before me, cold and dead, silent to all ears but mine.

Aria was quiet, now. She had told me all she could for the moment, and I regretfully packed her away into a shelf of my lonesome morgue. Soon, I hoped, I would be able to bury her in peace. "But we must leave the investigating to the experts, mustn't we, my love?"

The snap and whir of the investigators' cameras was mildly distracting as I examined the man before me. His toes were not touching the floor at all. His legs were hidden by white robes, held out by silver wire - silver wire! - to look as though he was floating. His arms were out from his body, his hands flat, as though delivering divine peace or removing a sin. His face, alas, was not as peaceful as my Aria's had been, and he was, judging by the still-dripping blood, only an hour dead.

We had found our killer.

"We've found our killer, but not our motive, Duck," Jethro said two feet behind me, snapping on white latex gloves.

"I wouldn't say that, now," I admonished him, not looking back. I walked around the suspended corpse until I could look at both the ex-Marine and the killer. "She transgressed on one rule or another - a fairly major one, I should hope - and he decided to kill her. He did it slowly because, much though he undoubtedly tried, he wanted a way out of it. He looked for an excuse not to do it. But, whatever she was doing continued, and instead of telling her so, he killed her. He likely suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder."

"I thought I was the profiler, Ducky," Ziva smiled, eyebrow raised in good humor.

"Ah, it's still your job to find her transgression."

"Got it," Timothy said at once. We all looked over and he pointed to an open Bible.

I walked over carefully and, with gloved hands, picked it up and said, "It's the Lord's prayer:

" 'Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.'

"And he had a note next to it. It says, 'Lead me not into temptation. I cannot forgive your trespasses.' "

"Translation, Duck?" Jethro asked, rolling his eyes.

"I think she wanted to know him…intimately. But he was obsessively religious, and wanted her to stop even suggesting it, but didn't tell her so. Presumably, she succeeded in bedding him. So, ashamed, he killed first her and then himself."

"Jeez, Ducky leave some of this to us, would ya?" Anthony quipped, jotting my words down in his notebook. "Anything else?"

I smiled and set the book back as I had found it, saying, "I will need some few moments to prove all of this. I will need to test Aria for evidence of a coupling, and I believe you should begin by taking the statements of those close to him. Was he truly suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, I wonder? You should all get on it immediately, I think."

Jethro gave an ironic salute and said, "Sure thing, Boss."

Wow, this was my first mystery fic. Was it bad? It was, I know it...